In an unexpected confluence of events, the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol unfolded while Gallup was in the midst of conducting a public opinion survey. This serendipitous timing offered researchers a unique opportunity to examine the impact of this significant political event on American public opinion, particularly regarding support for the Republican Party and Donald Trump.

An analysis of this data, published in the journal Electoral Studies, revealed that despite the gravity of the situation, the Republican Party retained a substantial portion of its support base. The findings suggest that Republican voters do not tend to significantly retract support from politicians who violate democratic norms.

“While before the 1990s democracies typically died through military coups, since 2000 four out of every five instances of democratic decline can be attributed to democratically elected leaders undermining the very institutions established to ensure their accountability (a process commonly called ‘executive aggrandizement,’ or more loosely ‘democratic backsliding’),” explained study author Sam van Noort, a lecturer in Public and International Affairs at Princeton University.